/lit/ - Literature

>>5004192
Would it matter?

>>5004192
Catastrophe. People would go crazy, defiantly try to prove that they are autonomous, and abandon all morals.

we already know this. most people don't believe it and those who do are mostly unaffected

>>5004205
Actually we don't know it.

There's a book EXACTLY about this. Free Will and Illusion by Saul Smilansky.

>>5004209
cmon guy, we basically know it

The issue of free will is purely semantics. Your personal definition of free will determines whether it is 'such a thing'.

>>5004213
To be honest, I was listening to an audio lecture today and Smilansky and his book was being discussed, so it's been on my mind.

>>5004219
We really don't. It's something that is impossible to argue for or against.

>>5004228
Only if you don't have your definition of Free Will properly worked out.

Schopenhauer lucidly defined the problem and absolutely smashed the idea the people have some sort of agency 150 years ago.

>>5004240
And that settles that, right, buck?
Fuck off you simple tit.

>>5004240
Hurr durr, I'm going to post a picture and appeal to authority instead of an argument.

Back to reddit, friend.

>>5004228
we certainly don't in the traditional sense of a powerful decisive moral agency which allows us to choose our actions independent of everything else, which is what a lot of people believe in. its a murky issue for sure but there are some concepts of free will that we can state do not exist with almost certainty

>>5004222
>>5004240
only 2 good posts ITT. rest are garbage by idiots.

>>5004278
Theres no way to defend that though, it completely rejects causality, and usually finds refuge in Dualism and the like.

If free will exists in can't be a natural phenomena, because all natural phenomena are subject to causality, i.e they arise as a result of prior circumstances, which would invalidate the entire idea of agency.

>>5004228
>>5004251
>>5004270
Americans who didn't pay attention in the science classes they did have.

>>5004310
>all natural phenomena are subject to causality
that seems most likely but I thought quantum physics upset this assumption (if even on a minute level) ?

>>5004301
I guess that refers to your post too.

I think the best post in the thread is this one:
>>5004197

>>5004192
I know there was an experiment with this shit. The results seem to suggest that telling people that they have no free will can turn them into slightly bigger assholes for a short while. They'll think nothing matters, that they're not in control anyway.

I wish I could remember the name of the article or even the journal it was in.

>>5004336
Quantum Physics don't invalidate causality, no.

>>5004338
>I guess that refers to your post too.
yes, I intended that.

>I think the best post in the thread is this one:
nope. "does anything even matter?" is pure shitposting

What do you mean exactly OP? That some high status person, or a dictator of planet earth announced such a thing? What a worthless, infantile question.

People will never admit it I dont think. its a very simple concept, and most people are smart enough to understand it but very few accept it, and it makes people very angry. As neuroscience and genetics and I guess sociology get more advanced the amount of perceived freedom will shrink more and more but people will still cling to it no matter what. If we were going to abandon it we wouldve abandoned it thousands of years ago

>>5004352
CHRIST. What venom.

>>5004346

I think you are misreading that post, or unable of deducing properly it's implications.

>>5004352
Not OP, but I believe the usual thought experiment involves a super computer that can basically predict the future with perfect accuracy. For instance, it tells you you'll eventually rob a bank because you're an insufferable cunt.

>>5004371
Can it predict whether it will answer "no" to this question?

>>5004383
Your question is logically impossible to answer, I don't see how its relevant

>>5004390
It is relevant by demonstrating that said computer is not logically possible.

>>5004396
It only demonstrates that it doesn't mean anything

>>5004192
Speaking in political terms, and hence societal terms, it ultimately wouldn't make a difference.

Penal systems would still exist, only perhaps go by different names, such as rehab centers or something. In fact, it's been somewhat moving in that direction already.

Just because there's no free will doesn't in any way negate the legal imperative to protect people's rights and safety. So, really, not much would change except criminals would be called 'sick' or 'defective' or something, rather than 'bad'.

In fact, I think you could perhaps argue that this could potentially lower crime rates, since crime would then be viewed as a mental deficiency due to bad genetics/social conditioning rather than a voluntary choice to break the rules. Seems a lot less glorious that way.

>>5004422
America would never go for that, their entire culture is based around the freedom of the individual and his self-actualization.

The one big issue I see with a society coming to terms with this is that it fucks heavily with our notions of 'equality'. Equality of opportunity and equality of outcome would effectively merge as concepts. I mean how far are anti-discrimination practices theoretically possible? If intelligence, perseverance, etc. come to be seen like gender or race the idea of success is basically destroyed.

>>5004202
go2bed man from underground

>>5004449
I think that's only a problem if you view it strictly in terms of genetic determinism, which would necessarily imply that nothing can be helped. But if you allow for social conditioning to play a role, and there's no reason to believe it doesn't, then you could effectively help someone move more towards a successful or productive way of living through better social interaction.

It's also possible that we do have some degree of free will, if only not total freedom. So it's not necessarily a total denial of individualism, but rather the ability to view it within realistic limits. I agree that it's a hard sell in America, but I'm not convinced that rugged individualism is any more beneficial than it is true.

>How do you think society would react if we come to understand there is no god?

By analogy, it's pretty simple to see how. They will live in blissful ignorance and believe what they'd like anyhow.

>>5004545
Exactly. We have around a lot of information that could blow up our conception about our world. But still people is more interested in football, facebook, and pleb music.

>>5004192
Free will NOT existing doesn't mean that the illusion of it doesn't exist.

Nothing would happen, because the illusion is too strong.

I have a short story Idea about this. A generation of children that can predict how many years a person has left.
the number fluctuates, affected by medical discoveries and ocasionaly personal choices (start exercise routine, new diet, taking that medicine, not embarking that plane,...)
banks and govern start taking the number of years people have seriously: why give someone money if they have only 3 yeara, 8 months, 10 days left?

only if the catastrophe was definitely not a part of them exercising their free will, that would be absurd

>>5004313
>implying an american would call someone a "simple tit"

>How do you think

I don't think, I just type out predetermined responses

and so do you

takakakak I'm not choosing to write this

takakakakak op is a retarded cunt

sorry I had no control over that

or my apology

so it's not sincere

but if a sincere apology isn't possible

takakakakaa

today I altered my path so I could get a better look of a totally legal girl who wasn't highly underage

shit I confessed

but I didn't choose to

you're not choosing to read this

you continue to read this shite

loser

i guess it's not your fault

you have no choice

cunt

fuck off eat shit and fucking die

god I wanna fuck tottally overage girls

but why is life so cruel

I can't because it's mean she's be scared and cry

i make the right choice not to do it

because that would be wrong and fucked up

actually I didn't make a choice

and neither did you

takakakakakakakakakakakaka fuck off and die

Every sensible person understands, but no one can truly feel that we have no free will. "We" only deal with phenomenal content, never the means by which it comes about. In order to truly feel that you weren't feel, you'd have to experience whatever it is that you're experiencing and the construction process of the experience (neural correlates firing in such and such way) at the same time with no time delay, which just doesn't make sense.

We feel free because our experiences are in first-person (you can't project yourself to external objects, you're always the center of your experiences), there's a certain "mineness" about them (I did x and y) and we don't experience the means by which they come about causally from such and such preconditions.

>>5004192
Free will exists, because we objectively and empirically experience it.

Claiming that free will "doesn't exist" is like claiming that the color blue doesn't exist: an objectively false statement.

Nobody would care

>>5006382
Nice philosophah bre.

>>5006382

Oh God, what are you doing.

>>5004192
>How do you think society would react if we come to understand there is no such thing as free will?
Don't worry, society is too stupid for such a thing.

>>5006382
>>5006389

What's the most compelling evidence in favor of Libertarian free will?

>>5008019
The Founding Fathers.

>>5004383
Uhhhh, I think you did that wrong.

If it answers, it's just saying "I can [or can't] predict whether I will answer 'no' to that question." It's not saying what it predicted.

You dun goofed.

>>5004192

How much better would /lit/ be if there was a philosophy board to handle this BS?

>>5004251
>And that settles that, right, buck?
Until you provide a counterargument, pretty sure it does

>>5006382
Check mate, atheists.

>>5004449
Americans are gradually waking up to the fact that a criminal justice system based on punishment doesn't work. Unfortunately, there's a lot of money in the prison-industrial complex, so actual reforms tend to be half-assed and too slow.

>>5004192
We already understand that there is no such thing as Libertarian free will. The entire concept of Character (the belief that someone's actions demonstrate something about them as a person, and can be used to predict their future behavior) relies on hard determinism.

People only ever bring up free will when they want an excuse to be self-righteous about either their own success or other's failure. The issue is not free will, but self-righteousness.

>>5004343

I have very, very grave doubts about that study. It seemed, implicitly, to treat 'exposure to a claim that science has disproven free will' as equivalent to 'coming to believe that free will doesn't exist'.

The effect measured was their willingness to cheat on some task they were assigned (they were told that cheating was possible and asked not to). The non-control group were significantly more likely to cheat. But my question is whether it's simpler to explain their behaviour as defiantly asserting their autonomy, rather than, having uncritically accepted pessimism on first exposure (I mean, when does that ever even happen?), calculatedly deciding that they may as well cheat since they can't be held responsible. Similar to what >>5004202 was saying, but on a much smaller scale.

Dan Dennett likes to pose a thought experiment about a brain surgery patient whose operation is a success, but who, on waking, is told that the procedure has eradicated his free will - there is an implant in his brain now that the doctors control and, from now on, whenever he acts, he'll think he's making a decision, but it's actually all controlled by the doctors. Dennett posits that the patient's behaviour will quickly degenerate morally. But I don't think that's the case.

We can look at Asian cultures, for instance. I've seen a lot of people claim that they have little to no concept of free will as we understand it. Yet they don't seem to be significantly less moral than Western cultures, do they?

>>5004228

The issue is strongly underdetermined, which is different from not being possible to argue for or against. We can't have empirical proof, that's all.

>>5006382
>Free will exists, because we objectively and empirically experience it.
OH MY GOD

>>5004343
>>5010506
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0Kgqp6S8PbC

Just for you. The experiment you mentioned is discussed in this one I think. Maybe it's not, actually, but it's still a decent listen.

What would it matter? Unless at the same time we develop the technology to predict all outcomes (if that's even possible with Gödel's incompleteness) it doesn't affect us. We must continue on as we were unless you expect everyone to just lay down and die.

>>5004192
The concept of fate or a Divine Plan can only properly occur in the present doubt of said things and with the belief of free will.
As people will feel more responsible for their own actions and act out accordingly. Finding out that free will does not exist can never happen as people will turn to sloth and become lazy or even turn to wrongdoing, inherently believing and justifying that whatever they do must be fate.

Proper fate can only exist in the doubt of fate.

>>5010506
>Dan Dennett likes to pose a thought experiment about a brain surgery patient whose operation is a success, but who, on waking, is told that the procedure has eradicated his free will - there is an implant in his brain now that the doctors control and, from now on, whenever he acts, he'll think he's making a decision, but it's actually all controlled by the doctors. Dennett posits that the patient's behaviour will quickly degenerate morally. But I don't think that's the case.

That's not determinism, though, that's fatalism. The patient will still assume whatever he believes about free will to be true for the doctors he imagines to be pushing his buttons.
The only effect I can imagine happening in such a case would be the patient's impulse control. If he's a rebellious, fuck-you-dad sort, then his impulse control would probably go through the roof, as he attributes every desire to the doctors and refuses it out of spite. Or start flipping a coin to make his decisions, since the doctors can't control the coin.
If he's more passive, then he might become more or less moral, just depends on what his first instinct is. If he's a smoker, he probably won't quit smoking, or if he's a bleeding heart or a natural born asshole.

>>5010708
>The patient will still assume whatever he believes about free will to be true for the doctors he imagines to be pushing his buttons.

Yeah, this is my major criticism, too. The idea just transfers the notion of agency to a third party, rather than negating it entirely.

>How do you think society would react if we come to understand there is no such thing as free will?

The world would be exactly the same. Free Will is one of those things where it doesn't actually matter if it exists--that everyone must live their lives as if it exists, in any case.

Harris brings up the point in his book, "Free Will", that having no free will is not the same thing as embracing fatalism. 'Tards like to respond "if there's no free will, why do anything?" Harris is amusing (and right) to say, "well, try it. Try doing nothing. See how far you get."

His book is spot-on about most things, except his qualm that a lack of free will would render our criminal justice system unfair. Although criminals did not have free will, they are still to be held accountable for the crimes that they commit.

There is literally nothing that will change in the absence of
Free Will.

It wouldn't change a single thing.

The whole point of free will is that it feels like there's choice regardless of the bigger picture. This is not ever going to change regardless of how much we can learn, which is very little on this subject.

>>5010744
>Although criminals did not have free will, they are still to be held accountable for the crimes that they commit.

I think that the justice system would have to be changed, though obviously not abolished. The notion of justice as retribution becomes entirely hollow without moral responsibility and only the deterrent aspect is left to justify it.

>'Tards like to respond "if there's no free will, why do anything?

Not as often as they threaten (I've decided that's what it is, a threat issued in response to the perceived 'attack' on their autonomy) to rape and murder indiscriminately. I have no data on the subject, but I'm fairly sure we'd have heard about it if spree-killers and serial rapists tended to be committed incompatibilist determinists.

>>5010781
>The notion of justice as retribution becomes entirely hollow without moral responsibility

It's already there. Modern criminal justice systems are concerned about segregation and rehabilitation than they are with punishment.

>>5010781
>Not as often as they threaten (I've decided that's what it is, a threat issued in response to the perceived 'attack' on their autonomy) to rape and murder indiscriminately.

But, one cannot will themselves to rape and murder people--let alone indiscriminately.

>spree-killers and serial rapists tended to be committed incompatibilist determinists.

This doesn't actually mean that being determinists made them act as they did. It may have given them a damn good excuse to do it, but having a good excuse doesn't make one do what they do.

>>5004192
>How do you think society would react if we come to understand there is no such thing as free will?

How did society act back when the very concept of 'free will' didn't even exist or even have been a twinkling in the eyes of theology?

>>5010801

In many parts of the world, yeah, true.

>>5004192
People will go batshit crazy just to prove they have free will.